South Korea's top diplomat headed to Kazakhstan Tuesday for an international security summit and bilateral talks with his U.S. and Russian counterparts amid heightened tensions over North Korea's island attack.
Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan plans to attend a summit of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the world's
largest security-oriented intergovernmental organization with 56 countries as members. South Korea is one of the OSCE's 12 cooperation partners.
On the sidelines of the Dec. 1-2 conference, Kim is seeking to meet bilaterally with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to discuss tensions soaring after North Korea's artillery assault on South Korea's Yeonpyeong Island on Nov. 23.
The attack killed two marines and two civilians and wounded 18 others.
Officials are also working to set up Kim's meetings with his French and British counterparts.
Other bilateral meetings Kim plans to hold are those with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Austria's president, the foreign ministers of
Kazakhstan, Denmark and Albania and the secretary-general of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), an official said
on condition of anonymity.
South Korea is seeking help from China and Russia to deter North Korea from provocations.
Beijing and Moscow are closer than other major nations to the communist regime in Pyongyang. The two countries are also among the U.N. Security Council's five, veto-holding permanent members.
Russia has taken a critical stance toward the North's shelling, contrasting with Moscow's reluctance earlier this year to back South Korea's efforts to punish North Korea at the Security Council for the March sinking of a South Korean warship.
But China, considered to have the largest leverage over North Korea, has still been sticking to a neutral stance, only expressing concern about rising tensions and calling for dialogue to diffuse them, without denouncing
Pyongyang for the bloody strike.
On Sunday, Beijing abruptly proposed an emergency meeting of six nations involved in talks to end North Korea's nuclear programs, but South Korea, Japan and the U.S. have all reacted negatively to the offer.
South Korea says laying the groundwork for substantial progress at the six-party talks is more important than convening the negotiations itself, and has urged the North to take concrete steps demonstrating its commitment to give up nuclear programs.
The six-party talks have been stalled since the last session in December 2008.